Kevin Yates
From November 4th 2006 to December 9th 2006 This Room Has No Walls

Picnic tables are nondescript objects, usually built from dimensional lumber. For the most part, they are very similar in form and function and have little importance aesthetically. They are both private and public objects, and provide places of escape, relaxation, contemplation, and longing, where families bond, courtships take place, and breakups occur. They take the domestic setting outdoors and provide an illusion of private, protected space. At night they have a darker side, as their park surroundings can become scary and dangerous. They are often carved on with messages of love and hate. In winter, they are stacked for protection from the elements. They do not hold the same value as indoor furniture, and never seem to acquire antique status.

The installation consists of 1153 miniature picnic tables stacked one upon the other to form a 7 foot cube. In this configuration they are both monumental and diminutive, both mundane and sublime, as the multiplicity of their repeated forms blurs their original function and shapes them into an abstract architectural structure.

Far below and almost lost in relation to the tables, sits a small-scale female figure. She leans, her ear to the wall, as if listening in on some unheard conversation.
– Kevin Yates

Kevin Yates (Owen Sound, Ontario) currently resides in Oregon where he is a professor in the sculpture department at the University of Oregon. His work has been exhibited across Canada, and internationally, most recently at the Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum in Oregon, and the Armory Show in New York.